When a semiconductor device is manufactured, various substrate processing apparatuses are used for subjecting a substrate to be processed, such as a semiconductor wafer (hereinafter also referred to simply as “wafer”), to a film-deposition process, a diffusion process, an annealing process, an etching process, and so on. Given as an example of such a substrate processing apparatus is a heat processing apparatus that heat-processes a wafer to deposit thereon a thin film such as an oxide film. For example, in a vertical heat processing apparatus including a vertical heat processing furnace, a holder called “wafer boat” holding a number of wafers in a tier-like manner is loaded into the heat processing furnace, and a film deposition process is performed therein.
The film deposition process of a wafer is performed according to a process recipe (set values of process parameters) including various process conditions such as a set pressure, a set temperature of a heater, a gas flowrate, and so on, in accordance with a kind of thin film to be deposited and a thickness thereof, for example. The process recipe is optimized by repeating the following operation. That is to say, a film deposition process is performed for adjustment wafers (dummy wafers) placed in a wafer boat, and the process recipe is adjusted based on a process result.
More specifically, the process-recipe optimizing process includes the steps of: measuring a thickness of a thin film deposited on a wafer by a film-thickness measuring apparatus, importing the film-thickness data into a heat processing apparatus, by an operator, through a storage medium such as a flexible disc, or automatically sending the film-thickness data to the heat processing apparatus; and calculating a process recipe such that a deviation between the measured film-thickness data and a target film thickness is resolved (see, for example, JP2001-217233A and JP2002-43300A).
However, a substrate processing apparatus such as a heat processing apparatus has to bear a heavy calculating load, when the apparatus itself performs a data computing operation for optimizing a process recipe. This invites deterioration of throughput in processing wafers in the substrate processing apparatus. In order to cope with the problem, there has been conventionally provided a data processing unit for this computing operation (e.g., advanced group controller) which is separated from the substrate processing apparatus. By connecting the data processing unit and the substrate processing apparatus through a network, all the required data are sent from the substrate processing apparatus to the data processing unit, so that the data processing unit conducts the calculation for optimizing a process recipe (see, for example, JP2003-217995).